The final week of this year’s News-backed Cambridge Summer Music Festival has arrived. Here are the not to miss highlights you still have time to book tickets for:

Bach’s great devotional masterpiece, the St John Passion, is being performed in King’s College Chapel on Sunday at 7.30pm, under the direction of Sir Roger Norrington.

Composed for the Good Friday Vespers service of 1724, Bach wrote it during his first winter as Kantor of the Thomaskirche and Nicholaskirche in Leipzig. With its vivid choruses, reflective chorales, and beautiful arias, the Passion has an intense emotional appeal that makes it a treasure of the oratorio repertoire.

Norrington – celebrating his 80th birthday – is a leading figure of historically informed performance practice; his innovative and ground-breaking approach has influenced our understanding of composers from Bach to Beethoven, Mozart to Mahler. Most importantly, he puts his research into practice to create startlingly fresh and exciting performances. He will conduct the highly respected Zürcher Kammerorchester, playing on gut strings and using baroque bows.

A stellar line-up of soloists is headed by leading English tenor James Gilchrist returning to the chapel where he was a Choral Scholar as a student, to sing the pivotal role of the Evangelist, with the Zürcher Sing-Akademie playing Bach’s harmonised Lutheran chorales.

PLUS…

Edward Elgar’s Piano Quintet in A minor, written during the war at his secluded cottage in Sussex, will be performed by the Aronowitz Ensemble – a group of outstanding young international artists (Tuesday).

Pianist Lucy Parham and actor Henry Goodman present a fascinating words-and-music programme, Rêverie: The Life and Loves of Claude Debussy (Saturday). Set in Paris in 1918, WWI is the backdrop to the composer’s complex life story, told in his own words, including gems of his piano repertoire.